"Ye Qing, what are you going to do now?" Chen Yue asked. Her hand was on her son's shoulder.
"Call Jiang Hanyu and Yun Qian Meng. I want an explanation," he said, anger flashing through his features.
"Didn't you see how your father reacted?" Chen Yue said, a note of mania in her voice. "If you talk to her, he'll go harder on you."
Bai Ye Qing scoffed. "My father has never scolded or beaten me. Suddenly he meets Yun Qian Meng and he turns against me." He shook his head in disbelief. "I knew dad was business-minded, but he wants me gone to save himself."
"Ye Qing, don't blame your father too much. He's getting old and he wants to protect everything…" she trailed off.
Bai Ye Qing gaped. "You just screamed at father for the opposite. Mom, please don't be the mediator," he said.
Chen Yue's eyes reddened.
Bai Ye Qing stormed out, his phone gripped in his hand. He had received the message from Yun Qian Meng and literally laughed. Until he started getting calls from his friends and colleagues asking me what was happening and if he had done all those things.
The first person to call was Jiang Hanyu.
"What the fuck is happening?" he hissed.
Jiang Hanyu, who was sitting at home, enjoying his first ever win was stunned.
"What do you mean, cousin?" he asked.
"When did that lawyer say the announcement was going to go out?" he barked.
Jiang Hanyu thought for a second. "He sent me the executed copy within thirty minutes of us leaving the building. Everything is in order and the announcement was supposed to go out at eight today." And then he paused. "It came out?" he sounded excited, missing the whole point.
"Yes, it came out! And your stupid ass didn't even know about it."
The other was stunned into silence.
"We will press charges for slander again!" he said loudly.
"What happened?" the man chanted, not understanding.
"She plastered all the pictures and papers on the internet and the world is laughing at me. They are calling me names. What else do you think happened?" he hissed.
Silence. "I'll see it right now. Don't worry!" he pleaded. The phone was hung up and Jiang Hanyu stared at it for a solid minute before watching the video.
His heart sank and he suddenly realized that they had been played. Of course, they had apologized in the most public manner. And that had doomed them. He was now glad that he didn't harp on doing the apology on a television channel.
That was the saving grace.
He went to the subsite and looked through everything and wanted to cry. All the paperwork contained Bai Ye Qing's name, but the information of Mo Yize and the addresses and numbers of all other people involved was blurred out.
This was targeted and planned, and they had walked right into the trap.
He dialed Li Jun's number quickly.
"Li Jun speaking, who is this?" the bored but familiar voice came on the other side. The sound of typing and flipping of pages was evident.
"Mr. Li, what is this? This is not what we signed up for!" Jiang Hanyu protested.
There was a moment of silence. "I am sorry, I have no idea who this is. Can you specify your client and what you are referring to?" Li Jun asked.
Jiang Hanyu clearly heard the amusement in the other's voice. And he knew… he knew that Li Jun was playing. He knew exactly who was calling him but he was taking a break from his high-stress job and taking it out on him… a newbie.
Jiang Hanyu cleared his throat. He calmly introduced himself, not showing his nervousness.
"Yes, we met this morning," Li Jun said finally. "What is it?" he asked.
"Miss Yun released a video and ruined Mr. Bai's reputation further!" he shouted.
"I have seen the video. I passed it. It lines up with each and every criterion," he responded calmly. "She publicly apologized. She posted the apology to her website, shared it on all social media platforms as per the agreement. She made it as public as possible. She posted the relevant paperwork just like the agreement stated. I don't see the problem."
Jiang Hanyu post. "We will sue you," he said finally.
"You can't," Li Jun said immediately, no emotion in his voice. "You signed a legal document stating that you can't file a lawsuit against any of the parties. Sorry. If you don't have anything else to say, I will go back to work." Li Jun hung up. Just like that.
Jiang Hanyu felt his stomach turn. He rushed to the toilet and poured his stomach out.
But now, he needed to think.
He rushed out of the bathroom and looked through every possible book he could. And he got an idea.
"Cousin, listen to me," he said.
"You better have a solution for this," Bai Ye Qing sneered.
"We can't sue Miss Yun or Venus, but if news articles post outlandish stories, we can file for libel lawsuits," he advised. "But we can also file for the information to be removed under the Right to be Forgotten."
Bai Ye Qing was silent. "That's something you can do?" he asked.
Jiang Hanyu hummed. "If you think something is adversely affecting you, you can get the content removed. You have the right for that. What will you do?" he asked.
Bai Ye Qing thought about it carefully. He needed money to file. He knew that he could make Jiang Hanyu fight on his behalf without money, but he knew that this cousin of his was rather useless.
This was the first good idea he had given Bai Ye Qing.
"Okay. Hang up. I have something to do. I will try to deal with this my own way," he said.
She asked him not to contact her again? Right after pulling such a trick? He would show her what Hell felt like.